captzulu said:
I have absolutely no problem with somebody quadruple-dipping. I mean, you do good work for a couple decades and when you've reached a point where you can reap the financial rewards for your good work, you're supposed to turn it down? For what? Some noble sense of obligation to an industry that doesn't value its employees? I don't have any problem with guys making a big name for themselves in newspapers, then shifting primarily into other lines of media, and finally punting newspapers to the curb altogether. The only issue I would have is when the writer's new careers demand his time to the point where he can no longer do his newspaper job adequately; but even then, the fault lies more with the newspaper for putting up with it than with the writer for getting away with it. As much as newspapers screw over their employees, I'm not exactly sorry to see a few newspaper employees get to screw newspapers back.
I'm all for people using their newspaper work to springboard to other opportunities.
It's just a matter of timing. If they minimize the time where they left-hand the day job and, ideally, leap completely to the better paying gigs, bully for them!
If they hang onto two or three paychecks, and short-change one or two or all three of them indefinitely, then I lose respect for them. Do it long enough and it becomes downright dishonest, and their reputation as journalists deserve to suffer. You should work as hard for your paycheck in Year X as you did in Year 1, and once you start unilaterally scaling back -- not to care for a sick mother, not to be a better dad but to move your schtick to other media for someone else's paycheck -- you are cheating the system.
And yes, captzulu, it is imperative that the newspaper honchos call someone on that behavior. But doing it is the character flaw, whether you're called on it by bosses or not.
I'm all for TK being an outstanding sports columnist back in the day and I'm all for him being a radio/TV giant now (though I selfishly prefer the former incarnation).
I just wish he had made a cleaner break sooner, before he so severely watered down his WaPo work.